


Inclined Toward Extravagant Lies

by Jarakrisafis



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26200090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jarakrisafis/pseuds/Jarakrisafis
Summary: Varric Tethras, best selling author, is writing a book about the Inquisition. Every story needs a little... Adjustment. Some tweaking. A little glossing over facts. The readers aren't going to know its not quite right.
Relationships: Female Cadash/Varric Tethras
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14
Collections: Black Emporium 2020





	Inclined Toward Extravagant Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeigePhoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeigePhoenix/gifts).



Varric glances up, absently nibbling at the end of his quill before realising what he’s doing and makes a face. Good thing it was the feathered end he’d started on, it wouldn't be the first time he’s realised he’s got ink smeared over his face and a black tongue.

Today’s writing is going… slowly. He despises deadlines. Single mention of a deadline and suddenly he’s sitting staring into the fire with absolutely no words forthcoming. He takes a sip of the wine on his desk; most would probably consider it more of a fruit juice, but writing when you can’t see straight is mildly problematic at the best of times. It's already well into the evening, the light that was streaming through the window into his bedroom when he started has long since vanished; so he's writing by the light of candles and the fire. Getting drunk would mean he'd likely end up with a page he can't read come morning.

Of course, the room he's been given is more like a full suite and still has far better lighting than his place at the Hanged Man ever did. He still misses that grimy little place. Writing in a big opulent office just isn't the same, Bran nearly had a heart attack when he moved his big desk into his bedroom. It's the closest he can come to being back there since living on the top floor above a dingy tavern is not suitable for a Viscount.

He sighs; so far his next book is nothing more than a collection of random scenes, and putting them together just hasn’t been happening. If he just keeps writing bits here and there he’s hoping something will come to mind. He looks round the room, as if he can find inspiration in the items on the wall before he dips the quill into the ink, gently tapping it against the inkwell before he puts the quill to page again.

"Not. One. Word. Tethras."

It is perhaps quite telling that Varric Tethras, best selling storyteller, master archer and successful businessman, does not need to answer out loud to get his point across. A single raised eyebrow does the job just fine.

The small thundercloud in armour stops marching back and forth to glare. Hands on hips, she attempts to eviscerate him with nothing but her willpower. "Urgh." The noise reminds him too much of Cassandra and he can't stop the chuckle from escaping. Cadash throws her hands in the air and returns to her pacing.

Fourteen steps across and fourteen back with a small hop over a rock in the centre. She's been at it for quite a while already. He waits a few more passes before speaking. "Look on the bright side, we're in a well stocked room."

"The bright side is out there. On the other side of this lovely rock. You might recall the light, called the sun." Sarcasm is laid so thick he could probably cut it. She throws herself down on one of the bedrolls with a clatter of armour.

"Well, getting caught underneath that would have been less bright," he points out.

Surfacers they may both be, but apparently some things are too deeply ingrained to not trigger. It's something Varric had only felt once before in such urgency. Being underground makes him uneasy, a vague sense of weight in his head that he can't shake. Like the time he was left in the Deep Roads with Hawke, he wishes he had the mysterious Stone sense Orzammar dwarves speak about instead of the vague feeling that there's something just out of his grasp. Instead the only warning he had was the ceiling deciding to relocate itself from firmly and solidly overhead to no longer solid and falling. Admittedly that was a blaring warning that he should 'Move, move, move'. Rather than stick around and be crushed. Still he might have had the foresight to get out a little sooner, and then not be trapped in a single room with nothing but travel rations of all the same type.

"I'm glad everyone else was outside," she eventually says. Varric can't help emphatically nodding at that. They wouldn't have had any warning at all. "I'll be having a very serious conversation with my scouts about making sure the caves they find are safe to camp in."

"Seems perfectly safe to me. Just lacking a door." He gestures round the little cave with its stash of bedrolls, blankets, food and even a crate of smokeless coal exported from Orzammar. Unless it took the scouts more than a couple of weeks to dig them out, they certainly wouldn't starve. Varric doubted it would take them that long, a perk to having the Inquisitor be trapped is the fact that they can't go on without her.

"Won't be safe soon," she mutters as she flops down onto a bedroll. "I'm bored."

That admittedly may be a slightly more serious issue. The last time those words were uttered in the tavern, a pair of Leliana's underthings were nailed to the chapel door the next morning. And nobody admitted to having seen a thing. A bored Cadash is a dangerous Cadash.

"I spy with my little eye... something beginning with R."

Varric tilts his head, looking round the small cave before going for the obvious answer, "Rock?"

"Well sod, look at that, you got it the first time." She rolls over, arms and legs flung off the side of the bedroll. "Vaaaaaarric, I'm bored."

“Really now,” Varric purrs, words rolling off his tongue like honey and echoing through the cave as he stands and turns in her direction. He can see the sudden interest as she sits up…

A hand slams down over the page Varric is writing and whisks it out from underneath his hands. He scowls at the streak of black ink and the slight tear at the bottom of the sheet where he didn’t move the nib of his quill out of the way soon enough. He hadn't even heard the door open. Malika usually has the decency to not sneak up on him, not least because he’s nearly gutted her a few times. In return he gives her the same courtesy for much the same reason.

“Really? I don’t remember that happening,” she says as she squints at his writing. “Give me the sodding pen.”

He passes it over, containing his sigh with difficulty as she scribbles in between his neat lines. Her scrawl quickly overwrites what he had there.

"Not. One. Sodding. Word. Tethras." Cadash growls out. Because she knows what he’s going to say; it’ll be some variant of ‘I told you so.’ And right now she’s not in the mood for his fucking sarcasm. ‘It’ll be fine, what can go wrong,’ she had said. ‘It’s underground, we’ll probably get trapped or something,’ he said. ‘Oh come on, what are the chances of that?’ she had said with a hard look, because really, the scouts had been using the cave for weeks.

She catches the small tilt of his head, the raised brow and the small smirk lifting one corner of his mouth. Her hands are on her hips within seconds. The absolute nerve, laughing at her, as the glare that causes Carta thugs to quake in their boots merely elicits a loud chuckle. She throws her hands into the air. He is absolutely impossible to deal with.

"Look on the bright side, we're in a well stocked room," he finally says after yet another indeterminable amount of time has passed.

"The bright side is out there. On the other side of this fucking lovely rock. You might recall the light, called the sun," she snaps back. There is no brightside when the valley is full of demons and the only way to close the sodding rift is stuck in a cave in.

"Well, getting caught underneath that would have been less bright." She has to concede that point.

"I'm glad everyone else was outside," she says, glad that it was Varric who’d been with her to grab some supplies. He was a little slower off the mark than she was, but he’d still known to run before she’d finished her panicked shout for him to move. "I'll be having a very serious conversation with my scouts about making sure the caves they find are safe to sodding camp in." She’s not grumbling. Much.

"Seems perfectly safe to me. Just lacking a door." Varric gestures round the tiny cave and she sighs at their supplies. They’re not going to run out too quickly, but there’s a limit to how much bronto jerky and cheese she wants to eat.

"Won't be safe soon, I'm bored." She doesn’t do just ‘standing around doing nothing.’ Except there is nothing to do in here. She sits down on the nearest bedroll with a huff. "I spy with my little eye something beginning with R."

Varric sweeps his eyes round the room before saying in a flat tone. "Rock?"

"Well sod, look at that, you got it the first time." She picks up a knife, spinning it round her hand. “Varric, since we’re going to be here a while, fancy telling a story?”

Varric hums, “I suppose it would pass the time until the mages work out how to move all that rock.”

“There. Fixed it for you.”

Varric frowns at the changed perspective as he scans it; he’ll have to change all that back now. Can’t have a tiny section that’s different from the rest. And there’s a few swear words he’d removed that she’s put back in, the readers don’t need to wade through her cursing. He sighs as he reaches the end. “Malika, the readers want romance… They want to be hit with feelings.”

She’s silent for a long, long moment, the crackle and pop of the fire the only sound as she thinks. The soft tapping of her foot joining the sound of the fire worries him. “Varric Tethras, are you turning this,” one hand makes a circle gesture that he presumes means their relationship, “into smutty literature?”

He turns guileless eyes in her direction, mustering the best Wicked Grace face he can. “No, would I do that?”

She looks him dead in the eye before smirking. “Yes. You totally fucking would, I read what you wrote for Cass.” She holds a hand out, wiggling her fingers. “Bring out the rest, I want to see.”

“They’re not finished,” he says as he nevertheless reaches into a drawer and pulls out the bound together scenes he’s already written. “I only started a few nights ago.”

She hums, taking his work before settling herself on his bed and lounging like a cat. Her voice fills the room as she reads aloud. He goes to add some more coal to the fire so he’s not just sitting there watching her. That would only fuel his muse with more ‘smutty literature’ scenes.

Delicate, small, inexperienced, were his first thoughts on the Inquisitor. As a writer he knew better than to rely on first impressions. Some of those he knew were wrong as soon as she barrelled into a demon on the slopes above Haven, and happily bludgeoned it into a smear on the snowy ground. It is the reason why he isn't utterly perplexed a mere day later as his hand hits the table, scattering cards and coins across the floor, to raucous laughter from the other denizens of the tavern.

"Not bad for just shy of forty," Cadash says smugly as she unlaces their fingers to the sound of coin changing hands from those who had been watching.

Delicate he might still apply to her, but it's certainly in outward looks only; she's a tiny package of muscle and sinew. And her guileless smile covers a mind as quick as his, as he has found out to the detriment of his own pockets this evening. He’s onto her now though. "Not bad at all," he agrees. "I get the feeling I'm not the first person to fall for that."

She laughs. "Not at all, though you were the first I thought I might actually lose to." She bends down, scooping several coins off the floor and heading over to the bar.

Varric gathers the rest, his stack of coins looking rather pitiful in comparison to hers. He's heard most of the rumours, despite the Ambassador trying to quell them, that say she's just a Carta thug. He can believe she's Carta easily enough, but just a smuggler or some such? Not a chance, she's got too much intelligence to be stuck as a back alley thief.

"Care to lose the rest?" A mug of ale is slid across the tabletop and he catches it with the reflexes of one who's lived half his life in a bar.

"You can try, I'm onto you now," he says, shuffling the cards and dealing them.

She smiles. "Are you now? We'll see, Messere Tethras."

He chuckles, slipping the angel of death free of his sleeve and adding it to his hand as she looks down at her cards. It's been a long time since he had such a challenge. "So, I hear you've got a new title?"

Her eyes narrow and she all but throws a coin toward the empty mug they're using as a pot. "Don't you fucking start. I'm a Herald of death, gambling and missing items. Not some mystical Maker."

He hums, a soft sound as he draws an utterly useless card and then immediately discards it. “Death, gambling and missing items? I doubt that.”

She hums softly before reaching out for the draw pile. “You did get the memo about my last job right?”

He hums. “I did hear that, but for somebody who professes to lift things, I saw that.” She smiles and puts the second card she was trying to sneak away with back into the stack. He’s onto her now. The money she’s been winning will be his again.

“Varric, I distinctly recall you losing that round. And the next few after that. And I also recall you had to come and get your shirt back the next morning.”

“Artistic license.”

“Mmmm. I see.” That’s the tone she uses with the Nobility of Kirkwall when they come in asking for stupid shit. It’s the ‘you’re such a fool I can’t believe I’m having to listen to this steaming pile of bronto droppings that you consider persuasion’ face. The one he’s learnt to head off unless he wants the poor noble to not be seen for weeks. Which on second thought would be a blessing for some of them, but Kirkwall unfortunately relies upon the coin of the wealthy to remain functional. He never said his city was a good city.

“How did you win that hand anyway?” It’s something that’s been bothering him for a long time, and better yet, it will serve fine to distract her.

She smirks. “Oh that. Old trick. Draw three but make the third one obvious. Nobody sees the second one.”

Really? He fell for that. Well shit. “Sneaky.”

She sits up and bows, a smug grin plastered on her face as she flips to the next sheet. “Oh this’ll be fun, I remember this one.”

The Storm Coast is a dreary place. The rain never seems to end, it just changes from one type to another. Tonight’s offering is a light drizzle through a fog that’s creeping in through the sea. They’re all soaked, the water managing to soak through thick gambeson and leather alike. This on its own would have been bad enough, but the Maker seemed happy to shower them with even more misery.

Varric swears, poking his fingers into one of the many holes in his tent. That arrow he thought he’d dodged had apparently hit his pack and gone through several layers. He glares at the broken shaft as he eases it out; this is just what he needs.

“You’re not looking happy?” He mutely holds up the arrow and glances down at his other hand, still showing off the ruined canvas. “Bollocks,” she says, glancing.

There’s not really much of an option beyond sleep out in the rain or share, and he turns beseeching eyes on her. Cadash smirks. “Ask nicely,” her voice drops to a purr, too quiet for anyone else to hear as she leans down, “and I might consider it.”

“Cadash,” he starts, trailing off when she shakes her head a little. “Malika love, could you be a dear and allow me to share your tent?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” she says, catching his arm and nearly dragging him the few short strides so they can duck inside.

She waves the parchment at him and snickers. “Strange, I remember sharing with Lace that evening, you know, to avoid anything awkward happening in such a tiny tent.”

Varric props his head on his hands and peers over his desk. “Mal love, smut sells.”

“But what about the pining, the heartbreak, the angst, the agonising wait, the true love only happening at the end?”

“I’m selling to Fereldans and Marchers, they are not the most sophisticated of readers. I tried that once and it got labelled as an Orlesian court intrigue.”

“Orlesian court intrigue,” she repeats slowly, trying to think of what he’s written that could be classed as that.

“It was set in Antiva,” he says flatly.

“Ouch.” She waves the next sheet. “Oh look, this one has Orlesian court intrigue.”

The corner of the Palace they were hiding behind was not _exactly_ out of public view, in that it had no door. It was hidden by the winding vines crawling over a trellis which was about all that mattered right now. They could probably manage at least a few minutes before anyone came looking for them. Even longer before they would be found.

“Fuck Mal.” His whisper is quiet, almost inaudible as he braces himself against the wall, hand beside her head.

Her laughter is muffled against his chest, as is the sharp gasp when his hand slips under her tunic. “Varric!”

“Yes?” He asks, leaning in to whisper in her ear as his hand moves higher to cup a breast. He smiles as he realises she’s not wearing a breastband today. That makes things so much more convenient.

“Never mind, do that again,” she says, her fingers tugging at his belt buckle.

He’s quite happy to comply with that request.

“Well, that will certainly intrigue the Orlesians, they’ll be trying to find the exact spot no doubt.”

He chuckles, that he can imagine. “As I said, Fereldans don’t understand intrigue, but they do understand slipping away to a quiet corner.”

She hums thoughtfully, tapping a corner of the bound sheets against her lips. “You know what, I’ll let you leave this scene in,” he waits for the ultimatum he knows is coming from the wide smirk she’s sporting, “if we can practice it.”

“Practice?” She cannot be serious. She waggles the parchment at him and he pushes himself up to go collect them before she reads anymore and wants to practice those too.

“Oh, I’m sure there’s some hidden alcoves around here somewhere. We can look for them tomorrow,” she lies back with a grin and a totally overdone waggle of her eyebrows that makes him laugh as he returns the parchment to the drawer.

“When we get caught, you can explain.” He refuses to deal with Bran if the poor man finds them mid coitus in a corner of the garden somewhere.

“When we get caught... have a little faith, Varric!”

“Love, despite what I may have written in some of those scenes, you’re not very quiet.”


End file.
